


Five times a PTX member cried uncontrollably and once when they all laughed their asses off

by FreyaOdin



Category: Pentatonix
Genre: 5 Times, 5+1 Things, Childhood Memories, Crying, Fic within a Fic, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 06:54:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10531218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreyaOdin/pseuds/FreyaOdin





	

**Based off of this prompt:**

  

**Avi**

Avi is eight when he finds out. He’s at Esther’s bat mitzvah, or rather, he’s playing in the park behind the restaurant afterwards with the other kids who are too young and too bored to sit and make small talk with all the old people who only seem to exist so they can come to these things.

They’re pretending things in the park, knights and damsels and golems and whatever, when one of them mentions something Avi doesn't believe. He tells her as much, tells her she’s stupid, but the other kids side with her, say that he’s the one who’s stupid and a baby at that. They laugh at him.

He still doesn’t believe it though, it’s utterly preposterous. But he asks his dad after his mom is done lecturing him for ruining his best clothes. His father hems and haws, but eventually caves and tells Avi the dark truth, and then awkwardly pats him on the back while he cries it out.

Dragons aren’t real, it turns out. There are worse things in life, he discovers as he gets older, and this is easier to pretend isn’t a fact than most. But it’s the first real blow to his childhood dreams, and that _hurts_.

**Kevin**

Kevin is eleven when one of the kids down the street gets shot by the police. He’s older than Kevin, just turned seventeen, and he’s been in and out of trouble his whole life with petty theft and drug dealing and weapons charges. The case seems pretty clear cut; the kid has always been bad news, there are witnesses who saw him pull a gun, and one of the officers involved is someone Kevin knows from the music school he attends who’s always been kind to him. 

But his parents still wonder, and his mom sits him down to talk to him about how he always has to be polite and respectful, never give the police any reason to look at him twice, go out of his way to make sure they know the color of his skin doesn’t mean he’s a threat.

None of his white friends get the same talk, he finds out the next day. They’re taught to listen to police and to go to them for help, but not to be afraid of them. The kid who got shot was a criminal so deserved what he got, their logic says; no further detail required. They look at him funny when he mentions his mom’s talk, like he’s the one who’s crazy, not the world they pretend doesn’t exist.

He goes back home and he rages, and he cries, and he pleads, and he prays. And he does it all behind closed doors because he wouldn’t want to scare anybody. Make them think he’s dangerous in any way.

**Mitch**

Mitch is twelve when knows deep down for sure, and fifteen before he finally admits it to himself. It’s not fair, but no matter how deep he tries to bury himself in the closet, he’s a little too close to the stereotype not to suffer some of the consequences anyway: high voice, feminine mannerisms, theater brat, and choir nerd. He’s a target for bullies whenever he’s not surrounded by his friends. He plays it like it doesn’t matter to him, that he is who he is and assumptions are stupid.  But it’s not very successful.

He tries dating a girl for a while. Kirstie, one of his closest friends. He’s hoping that it’ll fix him. That he just needs to spend time in a more romantic way with her, a kind-hearted, smart, beautiful girl, and then suddenly it’ll all make sense and he’ll want her like he wants the hot boys he’s constantly surrounded by. Eventually he realizes that he’s just hurting her in the attempt. He needs to break up with her, and the only way to do it and still salvage their friendship is by telling her the truth.

He delays it for a while. There will be no going back if he’s misjudged her; he’ll have to live with the consequences if she tells the whole school and his parents find out. He has no reason to believe his dad will take it well, which is one of the reasons he’s been so reluctant to come out at all, even to himself.

Kirstie…reacts badly. She gets angry and runs away before he can finish explaining, leaving Mitch alone with the knowledge that he hurt one of his best friends and that his foreseeable future rests in the hands of an angry teenage girl.

That’s worth crying over, right? Right or not, that’s what he does.

 

**Kirstie**

Kirstie is sixteen when Mitch comes out to her. She’d like to think she’d have handled it better, been more supportive of the risk he was taking and the difficulty of his position, if he hadn’t been simultaneously breaking their fledgling romance and her teenage heart.

So instead of accepting it graciously and thanking him for trusting her, she calls him a dick, flees back to her house, eats an entire carton of Ben & Jerry’s, and cries her eyes out while spilling the whole sordid tale to her mom, minus the part where Mitch told her he was gay, because she’s hurt and angry but not an asshole.

Almost two years later, when Scott pulls the same damn thing, she spends the first moment wondering if there’s something wrong with her, the second wondering why all boys—even gay ones—suck, the third, fourth, and fifth suppressing the urge to laugh in poor Scott’s earnest face because _of course_ _gay boys suck_ , and the next ten minutes reassuring Scott that yes, they’re still friends, and no, she won’t tell anyone until he’s good and ready because she’s still not an asshole.

Then she spends the next two years working on her clearly broken gaydar, because fuck this shit.

 

**Scott**

Scott is 24 when his grandfather dies. It’s not the first loss in his family; his grandmother passed away when he was 16, for example. But the loss of Tony Hoying kind of reverberates through the family and everyone feels it, even thousands of miles away.  

Scott’s not really comfortable here. Florida has never been his home, and while he’s got his parents and sisters and some of his closer cousins around to make him feel welcome, there’s a lot of extended family that he barely knows here, too. Some of them are fine, polite and friendly. Some aren’t so polite, the ones who haven’t joined the twenty-first century and still think he should be pretending to be something he’s not. And some are far too polite, almost to the point of fawning. It’s weird, being a celebrity at his grandfather’s funeral, when second cousins are asking for selfies despite the fact they just buried a man they supposedly all loved that very afternoon.

It’s also the first family event he’s attended since he and Alex broke up, and not everyone has heard so he’s had to deal with the awkwardness of explaining why Alex didn’t come,and then listening to an entirely new set of platitudes on top of ‘we’re so sorry for your loss’, which he’s already sick of.

He wishes Mitch was here. He feels off-balance. Vulnerable. All it takes is overhearing one of his uncles reminiscing about wood working to remind him how he never spent as much time as he should have in Grandpa Tony’s workshop, always off messing with his keyboard or going to the beach or playing a new video game when they visited. He doesn’t think his grandpa ever held it against him, his lack of interest in the workshop, but he’ll never know for sure.

It all becomes too much and he has to escape to the men’s room for some air. Which becomes some tears. Which becomes a half-hour long skype call to Mitch because as always Scott’s a fucking mess on his own and he doesn’t want to burden his parents with his issues when they’re grieving themselves.

 

**And One Time They All Laughed Their Asses Off**

It’s Kevin that stumbles across it first, bored and ego surfing on his laptop in the back of the bus. His facial expression must really be something, because it instantly catches Mitch’s attention, and since Mitch doesn’t know the meaning of the word subtle, soon everyone is crowding around.

“Wait,” Avi says, leaning over Kevin’s shoulder to better see the screen. “My what is going where now?”

Kirstie’s already laughing. “Scott? You want to take this one? Because I don’t know if I can ever work with him again if I have to explain how gay sex works.”

Scott’s an impressive shade of red, even for him. “And you think I can? That’s my ‘where’ that his ‘what’ is heading for.”

“Hey now,” Avi protests, voice deep and pseudo-serious. “Are you saying you wouldn’t want my ‘what’ up your ‘where’?”

“Considering you had to ask ‘what’ went ‘where’, you don’t get to be offended. Although it looks like you’re heading for Kevin’s ‘where’ in the next paragraph, so that’s good news for me.”

Kevin can’t help but laugh, even as he’s shuffling away from Avi and crossing his legs in a way that makes both Kirstie and Mitch lose it, falling against each other and off the couch, laughing so hard they can’t breathe. Which sets Avi off in a way they seldom if ever manage, so there’s that.

Scott breathlessly continues reading, recounting his fictional counterpart’s obsession with Kirstie’s breasts and Mitch’s…elbow? Kevin squints at the screen. Yep, he read that right. Elbow. There’s the five of them, all in bed together, various configurations happening all around, and Scott’s having sex with Mitch’s _elbow_. He and Scott both stare at each other for a second, and then they’re both howling and gasping for air too.

Esther finds them like that later, laying in a pile on the floor between the seats, occasionally still chortling and definitely still wiping tears from their eyes, randomly saying things like “Wait, whose ‘what’ went ‘where’ when?”

Kevin has long since closed the window and purged every trace from his search history. He’d kind of like to do the same with his mind, but it’s the best laugh he’s had in a long time.

**Thoughts?**


End file.
